The day before Elon Musk took the wheel of Twitter, after he carried that effing sink into Twitter HQ (to throw at people, I suppose?), his first viral, lame stunt as owner was the last straw that caused me to close my Twitter account that I’ve held since 2009 because I couldn’t stomach watching Musk destroy the social media platform I’d begrudgingly grown to love. Looking over the news reports of what Musk has wrought in just two short weeks, I feel seen. Now don’t get me wrong, I think Tesla vehicles are fine automobiles, and I support electric mobility and think the Tesla car model designs are sleek and efficient people movers, but I don’t support their failing, idiotic automatic driver lunacy, yet I got no problem with the cars. I wouldn’t buy a Muskmobile, mind you (check out the sweet, new e-BMW i7!) because I just can’t stand their insufferable blowhard of a CEO and ‘know-it-all genius’ owner.

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I’ve written about Fascism and Nazis a lot on this here blog through the years (now over a decade) and never in my life, at least since the darkest Nixon years, has the subject been so damned timely. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are (correctly) called out as semi-fascists by President Biden while Vladimir Putin in Russia makes the claim that Ukrainians are fascists, after Poots invades the peaceful European country in veritable Hitleresque-style. In America, Nazis and Fascists are without question derided as lunatics and losers, most hilariously depicted by Hollywood directors, with financing from international Jewish bankers I hear, such as Charlie Chaplin’s first talkie, The Great Dictator (1940) the great director (and proud WWII veteran) Mel Brooks in the Producers (1967) or director John Landis in the great comedy The Blues Brothers (1980) where “Springtime for Hitler” and “I hate Illinois Nazis” were funny jokes because fascists usually are a joke. Of course, the best way to attack a hateful ideology is with derision and satire and the cultural war against the Nazis was ultimately won by comedians and humorists while the actual war was won by our hardcore Allied killers, some no less hateful than the Nazis to be honest, but they were on our side.

Few remember a more polarized and toxic time in American politics, where even Watergate and the Vietnam War are being re-examined as ‘the good old days’ compared to today’s gloomy political landscape. It’s no surprise that the recent ‘leak’ of Justice Alito’s Roe v. Wade draft reversal has Margaret Atwood getting totally worked up again, she the great mind who conjured The Handmaid’s Tale was quoted recently saying, “Enforced childbirth is slavery” in regard to the long established right here in America. As a Canadian, Atwood should well remember that her country was the terminus of the Underground Railroad before the Civil War and I’d hope she’d use more caution with any comparison of these two separate and distinct rights. It follows statements in the press and Tweets comparing anyone who we disagree with to Hitler and the Nazis and that’s irresponsible hyperbole in the gravest sense and the Auschwitz Holocaust Museum has had to make that particular point a lot recently. This plea has fallen on deaf ears in MAGA-ville of course, where Nazi flags were unfurled in Disneyworld recently by disciples of the stupidest Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, because Disney supports gay, lesbian and transgendered folks and these Nazi flag-waving Floridians couldn’t be more vile and disgusting human beings if they tried. So the notions portrayed in The Handmade’s Tale are horrific indeed, however there’s simply no comparison with slavery to abortion. Perhaps the American institution of slavery prior to the Civil War could legitimately be compared to Nazism because both institutions were created by the utmost evil ever perpetrated on the human race. Atwood’s most recent comments about her novel and the reality we all face were more measured and thoughtful:

On June 4, 1940, Winston Churchill gave the greatest speech of the 20th Century, his ‘darkest hour’ speech which girded the British people for the travails that were to come to the ancient nation. Hitler had already invaded Poland and accordingly, but not expected by all, the British government had declared war on Nazi Germany but this ‘phony war’ as it was described was made very real after the British Expeditionary Force was stranded on a beachhead in Dunkirk after Germany invaded and defeated France, but miraculously the British Army evacuated as Churchill exclaimed, these hard and heavy tidings revealed that wars were not won by evacuation, this feat of escape after a lost battle, but he went on to declare exactly how the British people would go on to win the war: “We shall fight on the beaches…” and asserted:

[W]e shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

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I’ll bet you don’t know who Jackie Gareau is, but some might know she was the real women’s winner of the 1980 Boston Marathon and she’s still running strong today, but I’ll bet you definitely know who Rosie Ruiz is. I should say was, because unfortunately she died in 2019 of cancer at the age of 66 and if anything, Ms. Ruiz was a true fighter. She went to the grave still claiming that she actually won that ’80 Boston Marathon and who can argue with that now? Of course, to ‘pull a Rosie Ruiz’ is shorthand for being a fraud and a cheater but Rosie made bald-faced lying seem almost funny. Bill Rodgers, the greatest American men’s marathoner and the men’s winner back in ‘80 is also still running strong today at 74 years old, but when he took one look at the women’s ‘winner’ Ruiz and her meaty legs and fake sweat, he immediately smelled a rat before anyone else had a clue that Rosie was a phony. Her time would have been the fastest female time in Boston Marathon history and after he asked Rosie what her splits were, she didn’t even know what the hell ‘splits’ even meant. He told the director of the Boston Athletic Association of his suspicions just before the awards ceremony, but no one believed him and shortly after that, Massachusetts Governor Ed King crowned Rosie Ruiz the women’s champion. Bill Rodgers was chagrined.

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